Vortex Quest B. 05

== VORTEX QUEST 5-14 ==

== ENDGAME ==

The bastion of Champion Slyell'Pvan was set inside a horizontal tear in the rock, about two miles wide, a quarter mile tall. Stalactites and stalagmites obscured the view onto a barren, black rockscape, intersecting circles vaguely indicating where the missing vision bubbles usually produced glorious gardens and illusory delights.

At the far cliff wall were three structures, the imposing fortress at the center flanked by two lesser castles. The vortex rose over the left-most. Blue lightning from the contorting maelstrom zapped at the well-scorched ceiling.

The infamously many layers of force fields -- along the whole tear, wrapped around the fortress, covering minor entrances -- were turned off without exception. No fuel, no defense.

Multiple armies waited. The scattered remains of the champion's underlings, his realms cannibalized to create the Hell-Crown and now abandoned to scrape together a force like the abyss rarely saw.

Several Fiends in the air, multiple adult Wyrms, legions of Hellions, ranks of Hexers and their thralls, the sparks of large runic weaponry, Wraiths on the fortress towers.

Any onlooker saw a spectacle of indomitable might.

Chay saw weakness.

"...and then go directly for the vortex as soon as the Wraiths are dealt with," he shouted, sitting at the back of their winding ride.

A disembodied eye opened in the air above them, ten yard across. Gold and black, three pupils, all of them following their flight.

Chay raised his middle finger. "King Pwen'Gllach. He's just watching."

The bastion's weapons opened fire. Harpoons, ice bolts, heart-seeker arrows, explosive rounds.

Ascendant Völundr of the First Light Court flew to the front, his gestalt streaming like a dozen rivers from his white head-gem. Projectiles bounced aside.

The other Aelves expanded his shield. They were not going to enter the fray, but they were willing to render aid from the fringes.

The group was ten seconds from passing through the tear into the bastion's barren fields.

Monstrous eyes hung at the tips of stalactites, gazing at the battlefield, tracing the demigods. Chay liked to think the king was taking physical form somewhere just to munch on popcorn.

"Ready?" he said and handed the supercharge wristlet to Xane.

"As I'll ever be." The angelic band of four pearls snapped around the wizard's forearm. "Man, this better not disappoint."

Five seconds and they'd be over the battlefield. Chay oozed fog and let it collect around him.

Three seconds and the pantheon rose to their naked feet on the Wyvern. Chay was of course puppeteering it, since the creature would never have voluntarily flown into barrages.

One second and Xane slammed a kiss on Marcus' mouth. The Aelves broke formation to retreat, the gestalt-shield fading.

Into the tear, royal eyes opening across the ceiling to behold the spectacle.

The demigods continued a hovering self-powered flight, their Wyvern umbra-piloted into a Hellion-manned railgun down below.

Xane activated the first supercharge and-

===***===

Thaum-magic was the most versatile divine gift. That's why Xane had been picked to go first. He had to cause chaos among the defenders, eliminate big threats, all manner of shenanigans even umbra-senses couldn't fully foresee.

And so he did.

Xane was all rainbows and sparkles. Magic of every type radiated off him like a psychedelic star.

His aegis took supercharge energy and converted it into a holy blazing searchlight, his dick becoming the center of a full spectrum attack.

Rainbow light zoomed across the battlefield, erasing armies from existence. Frost, flame, acid, eldritch forces, the void, the cosmos. All at his disposal. He was carving through every static defense, every gun turret, breaking the walls of the fortresses ahead.

His motes were mere butterflies no longer.

Eight phoenixes of rainbow spirit hammered into the ground, exploding into waves of chaos, of iron shards, of grasping vines.

Hexers and their Gawri underlings turned to dust, rags and bloody bits. An Astral Wyrm -- a creature of cunning and knowledge and Slyell'Pvan's personal pet -- was bisected with a glance of Xane's beaming eyes.

The supercharge was fading. He could have activated another, the power was *intoxicating* to say the least. But that wasn't the plan.

As his rainbow aura shrank, he pumped thaum into eight new motes and dropped toward his friends, who were still two dozen yard off the ground.

"Woooooohoooooo," he shouted and his new butterflies, more colorful than ever, danced around his head. "Who's next?"

Chay reached out, eyes fixed on the battlefield where troops were reforming under the banners and horn-calls of Fiend generals between the burning and bubbling lines Xane had carved.

"Me," the leader said, and let the angelic band snap onto his wrist.

He vanished into a blob of gray fog and pulled ahead of them.

Enemy fire resumed, this time from Fiends who were rallying Hellions on the ground, flying above with strange, cursed weapons.

Xane, Marcus and Goro dove behind a turned over turret. Brain-numbing horniness gripped them.

The thaum-mage slammed a mote each into his friend's assholes and used his mage-cock on himself, making sure all three men got fucked so hard they could think remotely straight again despite the curse.

Three pairs of divine legs bent slightly and accepted the near incapacitating orgasms to preserve a shred of awareness. Xane kept his motes ready, Marcus his chakram. Goro was in mania-mode, his mark covering half his neck and chest, running down his right arm, making him least affected by what had to be a Wraith's doing.

White light erupted somewhere on the battlefield, diffuse but blindingly strong.

Xane glanced around their cover, eyes narrow, to see if Chay needed help.

The leader was still standing, reaching for his supercharge wristlet and-

===***===

Chay was a continuous explosion of pure white smoke.

The moment his supercharge had triggered, his aegis had shone too bright to keep his eyes open. But he didn't need sight. He had umbra-senses beyond reckoning.

He had nineteen priority targets, most of them Fiends. He took control of the two surviving Wyrms, now able to pull the strings on two major puppets at once.

The Lava Wyrm, made of actual lava as far as Chay could tell, snaked through the main Hellion force, spewing liquid fire to the sides even as its mere presence set wood and bone alight.

The other Wyrm was more esoteric in nature. Made seemingly of nothingness wrapped in loose ferns, the negative being propagated by having new ferns rapidly sprout in the air ahead of itself while the ones left behind withered to dust.

Chay sent the Fern Wyrm toward his enemies and plant matter sprouted from them, growing through their demonic flesh in ignorance of armor and magical protections.

But the Fiends had too easy a time evading.

He blanketed the area in his radiant fog. Shooting out a dozen tendrils of white smoke, Chay touched the Demonlings. They burned. His supercharged mists were too holy to handle.

Redirecting his puppets and using the fog like a soft wall on the Fiends, Chay pushed the collected armies away from the vortex.

As they scattered and broke, they made easy pickings for the Aelves, Gallant and his Nephilim, and Zlennrop with his Ultrallions who had joined as support units on the condition to be the first looters after battle.

Chay had twelve priority targets left, including the Wraiths currently keeping his friends occupied.

There was an entity inside his fog wall, unaffected by the heavenly radiance. What could- Pie.

Pie was feeding off the supercharge. Chay sicced her onto the disorganized forces on the main fortress wall.

She was a lion -- shining in the brightest white, enormous and lightning fast. Her fluffy cat fur now was an explosive corona trailing her long jumps.

Wraiths fell, ripped apart by feline bites, grown through with ferns, melted by mere proximity to living lava.

Six priority targets left. But he was running out of time. Pie drained his charge.

Chay had to reprioritize. The mission was the break the vortex, which was straight ahead, its base hidden behind a wall where- Of course. The Daemon Champion himself hadn't shown up yet because he was holding out there with... with... There had been too few aerial thralls for the amount of Hexers. And no casters among the Hellions.

Chay landed beside his friends who were just recovering from the Wraith attacks and set the Wyrms on each other, at the same time calling back Pie.

His fog dimmed. He held onto the Lava Wyrm. The charge band slipped off his wrist, two pearls left.

"Goro," Chay said. "The Champion is hiding in the vortex facility, with an exotic weapon. There's going to be enthralled Furies, Warlocks with curses a syllable away from being cast and probably some summoned monsters."

Goro solemnly nodded and took the golden band.

"You two," Chay said to Xane and Marcus, "cover us."

The pantheon moved forward under the cover of Chay's city-sized amount of fog, hopping over piles of corpses, shattered military equipment and Xane's chaos carvings.

Stones overturned on their path, eyes appearing on their undersides as if they had always been there. Pupils of red and green, silver insectoid eyes on stems, deep holes that blinked occasionally.

The king was watching and Chay flipped him off.

Four naked hunks with gleaming crotches burst from the fog a dozen steps from the left-most fortress' gate. Chay barely had to add a word to his gesture and a butterfly-turned-lightning disabled the trap above the doorframe.

Green fire pillars. Hellions teleported in. A full sized chakram zoomed left and right to relieve them off their necks. Marcus whitefire palm strikes and long-legged kicks sent more heads flying.

Goro grabbed Chay's cheeks with tenderness unbecoming off the savage warrior, gave him a chaste kiss and a rub of the cockhawk.

The mania-beast started to run, right hand touching the left forearm where the supercharge rested and-

===***===

Strength flooded into Goro's every fiber. His vision sharpened beyond the humanly possible as even his eyes fortified.

The mark of madness spread across his entire body as his muscles pulsed to greater size.

Crotch alight, a flowing mohawk-mane as long as his back, eyes pitch black. Goro broke the gate from its hinges, a door wing in each hand, his fingers pressing into the iron.

He shoved and the gate halves rammed ahead of him, collecting whoever had assembled in the entry hall. A jump left and a jump right, his shoulders ramming into the slowed wings to give them new speed, and the gate parts slammed into the walls, crushing all enemies they had collected.

A free path for the ultra-berserker to run. His heart was pumping near the speed of sound, blood in his veins rushing so fast it was heating his flesh.

His head full of utter calm. And joy. And a little bit of horniness.

Up the stairs into the domed courtyard where the vortex's base was, the blue storm reaching through a hole in the ceiling.

Earth! A blurry image of suburbs stretching before skyscrapers wobbled at the top of the lightning funnel, threatening to stabilize and allow passage.

The ground was littered with iron spikes and barricades.

Three Scourge Fiends, dozens of Furies with hypnotic patterns on their feather dress, Hellions in runic circles casting as soon as they saw him.

And Champion Slyell'Pvan himself, naked safe for molded gold shoulder pauldrons and leg braces, his two cocks held to one massive muscle thigh each by mere strings. Outward-turned, curled, ram-like horns, little black flames flickering within the curl centers.

He carried a long sword of bright mint color and was surrounded by a spectral, shimmering force field. Beyond Goro's immediate reach. But the mania-warrior had to make the seconds count.

As Warlock curses rained on him, Goro charged the Furies. He was unaffected, his supercharged murder-zen-mode keeping him sane, for a certain definition of sane.

Ripping bird wings and necks, Goro made the Furies drop and fly apart in panic. Foolish Hellion eyes that had followed him got stuck in hypnotic trance.

His legs were powerful enough to catapult him across the space like a bullet. He merely had to touch a Fiend and the creature fell apart, pale red flesh bursting like a stack of pellets.

The curses ate at him, but every godly motion let a dozen pounds of rot fall off Goro, his meat replaced before he made a landing. Another curse had his organs turn to mud. He was getting bloated from the constantly regrowing and liquefying insides.

Continuing to kill with his feet, he dug into his own abs and opened himself up. An explosion of black sludge slammed a group of Warlocks apart.

Only now the other demigods caught up to him. How could they have taken this long to ascend a dozen stairs? Did this mean he had only been fighting for, what, ten seconds?

The barricades he had thoughtlessly wiped aside were a serious obstacle to his friends, runic magic creating traps and invisible forces.

He leaped into a corner of the room, took on a horizontal superman-pose a foot off the ground and kicked off the wall with one leg.

Zooming across the arena, he shattered barricades like they were loose piles of sticks, iron shards exploding all around him as he dragged himself to a stop with one knee that out-healed the damage of creating a deep carving on stone tiles.

A fortress' worth of defenses, falling in the span of a breath.

He rose, stepping onto a red eye of King Pwen'Gllach that had appeared between his feet. He took stock.

Chay had a fist raised, standing on Marcus' shoulders. Hole's unseen blade was sucking up ambient curses that raced around the room, directed by a storm Xane created around the blade.

The Daemon's personal force field was down.

Green flames appeared on Slyell'Pvan, armor getting summoned onto his undefended body, piece by piece, from the legs up.

Goro's supercharge was fading. He was going to make the best of it.

With a roar that made dust rain off the high ceiling, Goro ran.

Lord Slyell'Pvan raised his mint-green sword. Goro grabbed the blade, its cursed effect turning his arms to ice.

He tore the sword from the Daemon's hands and broke the blade, his frozen forearm shattering into meaty ice shards. The regrowth was near instant but his supercharge was almost used up.

The mark of madness was retreating from his head and neck as if dripping off him, trying to buy him time by consuming less supercharge.

As the madness faded, emotions returned to Goro. Desires. Love and rage and fucking and killing.

Screaming with divine lung volume, Goro jumped up and grabbed the collar of Slyell'Pvan's harness that had just teleported onto his body.

The demigod headbutted the Daemon hard enough to shatter his own skull and neck bones. And again. And again. And a hundred times more. Healing as fast as he hammered his face into the Champion's. Goro was blind and deaf from constantly loosing half his face but he kept hammering his head into the mess before it.

Slyell'Pvan's face turned to a pulp, then his entire head got driven further and further into his neck until it was a mere stump. At some point, his charge was used up. He kept headbutting faster than the enemy could regrown a brain. When Goro's own neck was too broken to fully heal between slams, he hit with pure neck muscle strength and the movement of his torso.

They both dropped as the dead enemy fell over backward.

A hand on his shoulder.

The mania-beast stopped. No need to check if the hand belonged to an enemy. There were at most three people who would dare touch him in his state.

Goro's eyes regrew to see Chay standing beside him. The two halves of Slyell'Pvan's sword had been driven into the demon's chest.

"Holy fuck," Chay said, looking... lost?

Goro rose, smacked his lips together to make sure they had regrown already, and gave Chay a kiss.

"You-" the berserker started and tore Chay aside. A beam of magic erupted from an assembly of Hellions a second before Xane's chaos star could shred them.

Chay hover-fell to safety, while the beam bent to hit Goro. His blood turned to poison.

He went to his knees, feeling his aegis work with demigodly powers to sort him out.

Chay fell to his knees next to him.

Goro shoved him away. "No, back!"

The berserker ripped the angelic band off his arm and tossed it into the air where Marcus was flying past.

Then he pissed magic poison, directed into a hard stream by the cock cage. The stone before his feet evaporated from the toxic magic.

Reinforcements teleported in, including giant scorpions and Troll-based Abominations with spider faces. He pushed himself into the air to piss on them.

Chay shouted orders for Marcus.

Goro turned his head to see the slim-muscled prettyboy squeeze the last pearl on the wristband and-

===***===

Thoughts. A thousand of them, all going a million miles an hour. He was eternally grateful Chay had given him commands or else he would have wasted the supercharge just feeling awesome as balls.

Marcus' ultimate form was a humanoid figure of whitefire. Beams of holy radiance erupted from his dick trap.

His chakram spun at a rate that cut *air*, creating a sharp hissing even as it floated beside him.

The vortex was surrounded by teleporting runes that had been triggered already and were about to bring the whole shebang to some secret place ran by an unknown lord.

The leader had given him a mission. Destroy the fuck out of it.

His palms and the back of his feet ablaze like the rest of him, the animus-fighter cartwheeled and twirled along the rim of the vortex, each contact between his limbs and the rune plates causing a shattering that sent magic sparks up in a fountain.

His weapon meanwhile was helping against the reinforcements, cutting spidery arms off stitched-together creatures. Xane's bolts were making short order of the Abominations. Three horse-like creatures of pure fire were fighting a fourth one, controlled by Chay who stood behind it. Goro was... uh, pissing on a giant scorpion and that somehow burned through its exoskeleton. Marcus wasn't going to question it.

The teleport spell failed. The way was open to the grand finale.

Ultra-Marcus took to the air, spiraling around his main axis. He entered the maelstrom as a tiny, blindingly white tornado merging into a titanic, blue one. Passing through forces that would have ripped a mortal man apart, the focused fighter emerged in the eye of the storm.

He nearly came close enough to the top of the vortex to touch the wobbling barrier, behind which lay an earthly city.

He dropped like a comet.

Landing on one knee and the opposite fist, Marcus sent his supercharged might into the exact center of the vortex anchor platform.

A dozen massive fissures cracked the stone and metal, whitefire spreading through them as his animus-power fought the demonic commands embedded within.

The image of earth above was wiped away. The vortex started to burst, one strand of power at a time.

As the charge faded and the whitefire retreated to his mohawk, Marcus dashed off the platform, which continued to split and crumble.

"This is it," Chay shouted. "We did it. Let's get out of here."

Marcus joined the "Wooooh!" from Xane and caught up with his friends at the exit.

===***===

Chay looked for King Pwen'Gllach's eyes and found barely a stone skull blinking at them.

The battlefield had been picked clean by the lord's deserted armies, only corpses remaining.

Zlennrop and his amped up warriors were already raiding the main bastion, before the closest lord realized the grand champion's domain had become a free for all.